[Fontconfig] Courier New overrides monospace

[Raimund Steger]

On Mon, July 15, 2013 08:57, Trung Ngo wrote:
> Ngà y 15/07/2013 00:50, Felix Miata viết:
>> On 2013-07-15 00:00 (GMT+0700) Trung Ngo composed:
>>
>>> Courier New is a horrible font on Linux.
>>
>> Unbolded Courier New is an ugly font everywhere its stem weight isn't at
>> least 2px (>36px). http://fm.no-ip.com/Auth/Font/fontm-cour.html#pixel
>
> [...]
> I suggest we remove Courier New from 60-latin.conf since
> ergonomics-wise, such a thinly rendered font should never be considered

Courier New should really render OK if you turn off AA for small pixel
sizes and use the bytecode hinter. (That's what it was designed for, after
all.)
If you absolutely need AA and want the font to have more weight, you could
increase it by setting the 'embolden' flag, like so:

<match target="font">
  <test name="family"><string>Courier New</string></test>
  <test name="pixelsize" compare="less"><double>36</double></test>
  <test name="weight" compare="less"><double>100</double></test>
  <edit name="embolden" mode="assign">
    <bool>true</bool>
  </edit>
</match>


> as a default. Liberation Mono, as its metric-compatible alternative with
> similar language coverage should be chosen instead.

I doubt it has:

$ fc-list ':lang=vi' family|egrep 'Courier New|Liberation Mono'
Courier New

$ fc-list ':lang=en' family|egrep 'Courier New|Liberation Mono'
Liberation Mono
Courier New

In this situation, Courier New is still a better fallback than say, a 
non-monospace font.

Raimund



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